It occasionally takes 'te' as in English 'to' but that is more exceptional in Dutch. The form with te is known as the extended infinitive and it has its own uses. Some of them are quite comparable to what happens in English:

dat is moeilijk te maken - that is hard to make

The infinitive can be used as a noun where English uses the gerund in -ing. It is always neuter in gender:

vertellen

eten

leven

het vertellen van volkverhalen is een leuk tijdverdrijf.

the telling of folktales is a nice pastime.

het eten - the food, the meal

het eten is klaar! - dinner's ready!

het leven - life

There is a present participle, it ends in -end(e) rather than -ing. It is used mostly as an adjective[2]:

volgen

volgend

de week die volgt → de volgende week

the week that follows → the following week

volgend jaar

next year

There are forms ending in -ing in Dutch but they are (feminine) nouns of action only loosely associated with the verb they derive from, e.g.

vertalen

vertaling

vertalen - to translate

de vertaling - the translation

We will revisit verbal nouns much more extensively in one of the later lessons.

Of course, there are a number of irregular verbs in Dutch, but often they are the same ones as in English. In English can and may do not take an -s in the third person. In Dutch a similar thing happens:

Again the spoken language has a clearer distinction than the written one. The forms m'n, z'n, and especially d'r are often written as mijn, zijn and haar in formal writing. The form je is pretty much the only clitic possessive generally accepted in writing.

↑The linguistic advice of the Taalunie [1] and [2] are downright contradictory. One one page it is said that the imperative gets a -t in the presence of the personal pronoun u, on the other it says that this is not an imperative! The case of to be is not discussed, but it is hard to argue that weest u is not an imperative, because an indicative u weest does not exist. The other authoritative source the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst (ANS) has little more to offer than a few weasel words. The author of this book thinks that the Taalunie is simply mistaken in its analysis